Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary [antikvár]

Preface In the eighty-eight years of its existence, Borland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary has served the needs of countless students and practitioners of medicine and related fields as an up-to-date source, in readily accessible form, of definitions of the terms they use every day. We have borne in mind in the preparation of this 27th Edition the basis on vi^hich any dictionary stands—that is, the need for a repository of agreed-upon vocabulary for the interchange of ideas. The challenge has been to maintain the standards of currency and usefulness set by our predecessors in the face of today's enormous increase of knowledge in medicine and science, the ever deepening complexity of the concepts, the rapidity with which the knowledge becomes available, and the greater number of forums for the presentation of newly discovered facts. For the 27th Edition we eliminated himdreds of obsolete terms to make room for many more new terms and for more expansive definitions of existing terms warranted by advances in knowledge and understanding. These additions and changes have been made throughout the work. Furthermore, exhaustive review produced major changes in such particular categories of information as immunology, bacteriology, infectious diseases, enzymology, endocrinology, dermatology, tropical medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. Surgery, genetics, genetic diseases, dentistry, mathematics, and statistics also were given detailed attention. The plates, illustrations, and tables were carefully evaluated, and much of the artwork was redravra in a more modem style. Several tables of useful information, including "Laboratory Values of Clinical Importance," were added as appendices to the work. And, finally, with this edition there is a change in poUcy with regard to the placement of certain entries: acids can be found at the names of the individual acids, enzymes should be sought at individual names rather than class names, and enzyme deficiencies are found following the specific enzyme involved (see "Main Entries and Subentries" in the "Notes on the Use of this Dictionary"). Every lexicographer finds himself occasionally embroiled in the debate whether a dictionary should simply reflect usage or offer itself as a set of standards. Our resolution of this quandary has been that Borland's must reflect terms encountered in everyday use, but there is often an opportunity to show preference for properly constructed and unambiguous terms by placing the definitions with them and showing cross references to them at the entries for less etymologically acceptable synonyms. We believe that a dictionary has some role in upholding the principle that accurate and efficient expression of ideas requires integrity of language. We have in some cases yielded entirely to usage, however, when to-ignore a term that has become entrenched among a community of users would leave our collection of entries suspect as to currency and completeness. We have not set ourselves as arbiters of stylistic questions that arise in writing and editing, such as the use of diphthongs or the hyphenation of compound words, and we have made no attempt to present every stylistic variation that might be acceptable. We hope you will find that the 27th Edition of this Dictionary meets your need for a current and useful source of medical and scientific information. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To our consultants, whose names are listed on the following page, we acknowledge a huge debt; their help made vdsdom of selection, contemporaneity of definition, and accuracy of infor-